A somewhat relevant example of this that came to mind was actually Apple's A10 Fusion, the one after the A9. While it does also maintain a distinct separate PowerVR GPU, it also has a 4 core CPU now. Two cores are lower powered and two have better performance, so the lower powered cores are used when the phone isn't doing performance heavy operations in order to conserve battery life.
gogogo
What type of tradeoffs do mobile cores have to make relative to those of computers?
EggyLv999
The largest tradeoff is power: mobile SOCs are very heavily constrained by their power. More powerful batteries, both in capacity and power use, are much heavier and hotter than less powerful batteries, the Note 7 is a good example of a battery which is packed too tightly and results in serious heat dissipation issues. Mobile systems have little to no concept of cooling besides radiation for the heat to dissipate. Another tradeoff to consider is space, since mobile devices don't have nearly as much space as desktops or laptops so the chips on an SOC must be densely packed.
jmackama
EggyLv999 mentioned mobile phones usually try to minimize power consumption/heat production. What you give up to get lower power is usually clock speed and transistor density. If you decrease the clock speed, you decrease the IPS for every core you have, decreasing performance. If you decrease your transistor density, you can fit fewer cores, lowering your overall IPS at the same clock speed. In situations where the heat dissipation is a hard limit, you are then faced with a choice between fewer faster cores or more slower cores. For most mobile devices, the flexibility offered by multiple cores is advantageous, especially because power depends more on utilization, as you can turn off unused cores if the device is mostly idle.
A somewhat relevant example of this that came to mind was actually Apple's A10 Fusion, the one after the A9. While it does also maintain a distinct separate PowerVR GPU, it also has a 4 core CPU now. Two cores are lower powered and two have better performance, so the lower powered cores are used when the phone isn't doing performance heavy operations in order to conserve battery life.
What type of tradeoffs do mobile cores have to make relative to those of computers?
The largest tradeoff is power: mobile SOCs are very heavily constrained by their power. More powerful batteries, both in capacity and power use, are much heavier and hotter than less powerful batteries, the Note 7 is a good example of a battery which is packed too tightly and results in serious heat dissipation issues. Mobile systems have little to no concept of cooling besides radiation for the heat to dissipate. Another tradeoff to consider is space, since mobile devices don't have nearly as much space as desktops or laptops so the chips on an SOC must be densely packed.
EggyLv999 mentioned mobile phones usually try to minimize power consumption/heat production. What you give up to get lower power is usually clock speed and transistor density. If you decrease the clock speed, you decrease the IPS for every core you have, decreasing performance. If you decrease your transistor density, you can fit fewer cores, lowering your overall IPS at the same clock speed. In situations where the heat dissipation is a hard limit, you are then faced with a choice between fewer faster cores or more slower cores. For most mobile devices, the flexibility offered by multiple cores is advantageous, especially because power depends more on utilization, as you can turn off unused cores if the device is mostly idle.